Colin Trevorrow Talks About His 'Star Wars: Episode 9' Firing

Colin Trevorrow has opened up (slightly) about being fired from Star Wars: Episode 9. While the Jurassic World filmmaker doesn't provide much insight into what happened, he also doesn't seem to have any regrets.

In September 2017, word broke that Colin Trevorrow would no longer be helming Star Wars: Episode 9. Behind-the-scenes shake-ups are becoming commonplace for the Star Wars films – Rogue One: A Star Wars Story underwent extensive reshoots, and Lucasfilm and Disney ended up firing Solo: A Star Wars Story filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller and replacing them with Ron Howard. Still, Trevorrow's firing from Episode 9 came as a bit of a surprise, and despite some rumors – Trevorrow allegedly didn't want to play by Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy's rules – we've never gotten the full story.

Now, Trevorrow is talking about his firing. Sort of. The filmmaker – who has bounced back just fine, since he's already attached to helm Jurassic World 3 – recently spoke with Empire about his Episode 9 firing, and it sounds like he has no regrets. You won't find any juicy details in this statement; there's no confirmation as to what Trevorrow's Episode 9 was even about. But to hear the filmmaker tell it, he's just happy to have had the experience:

"I don't want to talk too much about it because I don't want to affect the way that fans get to see these films...When we were kids, these movies came to us from far away. They were a gift. And the more we talk about how they're made, the more it reveals that they're just movies. But they're not just movies, they're more than that. Beyond that, I got the opportunity to tell a story that is a celebration of everything I believe in, I got to tell it to George Lucas and I got to tell it to Luke Skywalker, and those are experiences I will cherish for the rest of my life."

As for what happened with Trevorrow's proposed film, we may never really know all the details. Most reports indicate that Kathleen Kennedy was unhappy with Trevorrow's ideas for the film. Trevorrow wrote a draft with his frequent collaborator Derek Connolly, but Kennedy rejected it. After this, Lucasfilm hired Harry Potter and the Cursed Child writer Jack Thorne to rewrite the Trevorrow/Connolly script, but Lucasfilm wasn't happy with that, either. Trevorrow attempted to use this opportunity to lobby to write a new script, but Kennedy and company weren't having it anymore – they gave Trevorrow the boot.

After Trevorrow was let go, Star Wars: The Force Awakens filmmaker J.J. Abrams was brought in to helm the upcoming movie. "I had a bunch of ideas from the beginning, back on VII, of where the story would go," Abrams said. "I just never in my wildest dreams thought I would have a chance to execute them."

Star Wars: Episode 9 opens on December 20, 2019.